I’ve recently been working longer hours than usual away from home. My dog has been much more physically affectionate when I’m around because he misses me (cries). For example, at night he sleeps against my leg so that he’ll know if I get up. Things have been tough recently but knowing that this furry monster that lives in my house loves me has been helping.
Dogs are so great for therapy like that. My dog tells me dozens of times a day how much she loves me, and sometimes that snaps me out of my self-defeating mood.
This is probably stupid, but I stopped at a local farm/nursery today to pick up strawberries and saw some super cool looking annuals. I should have taken a picture/written down the flower because it would look awesome potted in my little garden.
They were tiny, super tight balls of color.
That’s not stupid it’s lovely
Go back and ask someone about them! 😁👍
I went back and bought some
They are technically triggers but for good things, right?
No. A trigger is a link to a negatives experience. This is noticing good things.
So you mean like a trigger but for good things?
I mean I think we are joking here and I did chuckle, but I would agree that there is a clear distinction.
A trigger is a conditioning you have that brings up negative past experiences and associations.
These glimmers are basically you conditioning yourself to check-in with yourself and appreciate a moment and be more conscious of positive emotions or associations. So yes both conditioning, but one is a totally involuntary conditioning and the latter is a trained conditioning.
And I would say in their intensity they will also be very different. We are just very wired to feel negative emotions incredibly visceral to immediately change our behaviour. The same is not really true for conditioning ourselves to appreciate a moment or perspective.
How hard is it to accept that OP messed up instead of throwing objectively wrong word salad? Your whole argument is like someone trying to claim that cents are not money because they can’t be used to buy big things.
Triggers are anything that initiates a reaction or event, regardless of their intensity. They are independent of how they are perceived, whether positively or negatively. Triggers have developed a tendency toward negativity due to their rising connection to negative events.
Glimmers are, at best, a specific type of positive trigger with added context.
Another example can be reading my reply. If you were curious about this whole thing, you would be TRIGGERED to feel happy or excited that you learned something new, and this would become your GLIMMER. On the other hand, if you were argumentative, you would be TRIGGERED to feel bad that some random person on the internet does not agree with your definition, which would fulfill your definition of triggers.
This thread can be a glimpse of Orwellian doublethink horror.
For what it‘s worth I think you are correct. Even if I feel triggered in feeling that you came in hot, but you are speaking truth and in a mental health forum I think that is most important.
I think in my response I should have rather touched upon that what the other poster is touching upon is that for a Glimmer we sometimes have to learn to experience them fully, which is not a clear distinction between the two. There can also be negative triggers you do not catch up on.
So yes, I drew a false dichotomy and should have approached this differently, thank you for correcting it.
no, i think a trigger is something that gives you the urge to be angry about something right now.
a glimmer would give you a feeling of content-ness, but it lasts longer. like maybe a few seconds or hours.
I have already explained myself so simply copy pasting:
How hard is it to accept that OP messed up instead of throwing objectively wrong word salad? Your whole argument is like someone trying to claim that cents are not money because they can’t be used to buy big things.
Triggers are anything that initiates a reaction or event, regardless of their intensity. They are independent of how they are perceived, whether positively or negatively. Triggers have developed a tendency toward negativity due to their rising connection to negative events.
Glimmers are, at best, a specific type of positive trigger with added context.
Another example can be reading my reply. If you were curious about this whole thing, you would be TRIGGERED to feel happy or excited that you learned something new, and this would become your GLIMMER. On the other hand, if you were argumentative, you would be TRIGGERED to feel bad that some random person on the internet does not agree with your definition, which would fulfill your definition of triggers.
This thread can be a glimpse of Orwellian doublethink horror.
😒
Walking in an unkempt field with my dog on a late spring evening, no one else around, listening to the crickets.
The blue sky through a gap in the trees
A momentary lapse in background noise so it’s unexpectedly quiet
The feeling of wind tugging at your clothes
Rain on the roof
Kids running home from the school bus
Starlings in the tree out my office window singing
The sun on my back, the wind on my front
Sore muscles from hard exercise
The twist in a short story I read, and the wow moment
My room being tidy
Started antidepressants (sertraline) 2 weeks ago, after refusing them all my life, because of the studies that are mixed at best. I am a pessimistic guy, but I can tell they are starting to work way beyond placebo. It gives me hope after feeling hopeless for most of my life.
That’s the one I’m on! It helped me immensely and I could never picture going back now. It was so bad at one piont I could barely get out of bed for anything and now I hop right out of bed to get the day started! Been on it for many years now, and have no regrets.
Awesome. That is very encouraging. Thank you. I am glad to hear you’re doing better now.
Keep on keeping on, you beautiful thing!
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I was on sertraline a while back. Like the other poster, it was a dramatic difference – like the broken part of my brain was put on mute. Suddenly, life didn’t seem so hopeless.
Great to hear! Looking forward to the follwing weeks, because I was told its effects increase over at least a month.
i recently discovered i’m better at basketball than i thought i’d be after years of not practicing
Watching my 1 year old daughter rock in her little rocking chair and be perfectly content.
Training to notice things does cause those things to occur more often, you’re just noticing more of what was there.
Mental health is not improved by magical thinking. It can literally become its own mental disorder.
I don’t see how noticing more of what’s there is a bad thing, or magical thinking. It won’t make more nice things happen, but being more observant of the ones that are happening is still a benefit.
Nothing more of what exists is great but the meme doesn’t end there, it day more will come into existence which isn’t true and is the magical thinking part.
There is are entire movements that pushes these types of narrative with all sorts of end goals. A very common one is how imagining being rich will make your money problems will disappear.
This sort of stuff sells because it works temporarily. Ignoring problems can make them appear to disappear but reality remains unaffected. The problems will persist.
If you’re in an bad situation, imagining you are not is a common coping skill but anyone claiming it will end the bad situation is pushing magical thinking.
Making it more tolerable is only the correct solution if it’s some specific types of anxieties.
That wasn’t my takeaway. I don’t think this claimed a solution to getting out of a situation. I think if you spend your time focusing on the bad parts of your day more than the good parts, you will feel worse, regardless of your situation. This is just about focusing on the positives.
Sure, but confirmation bias + placebo is better than negative spiralling into your triggers, no?
If your goal is to only cope then it’s fine; enjoy the delusion. If you went to accept things as they are, good and bad then no.
It’s not delusional to recognize that good things happen, or that there is still stuff in the world that makes you happy. You can both work to recognize goodness and still remember the world’s evils.
I think you’re misunderstanding some points here.
Mental health is not improved by magical thinking.
The question is: what is the alternative? Rational thinking? Falling back into scrutinizing everything until your head hurts? Getting into arguments?
Magical thinking calms you down and gets your heart rate back into the healthy configuration. I’d call that a win.
I’m having a very hard time parsing your comment
Is this related having goosebumps as a physical reaction?
Ooh I learned the word for this recently: frisson.
If you like having goosebumps
If not then it’s back to being a “trigger”
… so related either way!?:-)
This happened few days back, I was on a bus and the bus conductor had this infectious smile, the way he was happy and talking to people as he was asking for bus tickets felt wholesome. There was also this lady who appeared to not know the local language who was looking cluelessly as he was talking to the others, he then realised she didn’t know the language and he switched to the language she was speaking and made up something funny which I didn’t understand because I don’t know the language. Seeing how he was able to cheer up the travellers felt wholesome, it gave me much needed positivity for the rest of the day even though he didn’t talk to me or anything, it had me thinking how better our life would be if more people were like this.
For me it’s bees. Honestly any pollinator, even wasps. I call the ones in my yard my ladies or my babies. I love them so much. I have clover instead of grass for them. I like to stand at the window and watch them.
Saw a person smile, caught a scent of someone else, was able to breath normally, felt my heartbeat soften, noticed on my skin some small scars from my childhood, remembered a joke somebody dear to me used to tell, saw a young pup react to her first ever experiences, found somebody having a hard time transitioning from Windows to Linux… Thankful to be alive at the same points in time and space as some truly wonderful beings.
Dappled sunlight does this to me - it’s almost a euphoria and pretty reliably reproducible. Morning light works the best.
And yes, I did get a CAT scan just to check.
